I always have so much trouble deciding where to post....CPU? Motherboard/Chipset? System Builder's Anonymous? You can almost never talk about one component to the exclusion of all others.

Anyhow, I would like to know if there are people here who are using two E5-26xx CPUs in a workstation type of system (as opposed to a server). I am curious about hex and octa core systems and all of the reading material that I'm able to find doesn't really help me understand on an "apples-to-apples" basis.

Currently, my budget does not support spending $1200 on two E5 CPUs or $600 for a motherboard. But I am curious and would like to learn more about this type of system. My usage interests are DAW, animation/3d rendering, and folding.

For the two examples below, I tried to pick processors with the same number of cores and roughly close in speed and price, and I would assume either a Geforce 680 or 690 as well as 64 GB RAM and competently fast HDDs or SSDs.

Do they make a dual socket board for 1155 workstation cpus???? if they do i would look down that road i am sure you would get better performance then a 3930k build. But i do not even know if they make a dual cpu 1155 board. If they do i wonder what the fastest cpu you could get??? 2600k workstation equivalent ? Sure as hell would use a lot less power then a dual 2011 board.

I do know the 3.1ghz 8 core 2011 server chip with HT/16 threads and i think 30mb cache, costs around 1600$ just for the 150watt tdp cpu

vargis14 wrote:Do they make a dual socket board for 1155 workstation cpus???? if they do i would look down that road i am sure you would get better performance then a 3930k build. But i do not even know if they make a dual cpu 1155 board. If they do i wonder what the fastest cpu you could get??? 2600k workstation equivalent ? Sure as hell would use a lot less power then a dual 2011 board.

Nope, to go with non-2011 dual sockets, you need to go to socket 1366, which is the predecessor to socket 2011. Based on my reading, 1366 gives up quite a lot:

1. 1366 has no PCIe 3.0, and fewer lanes.2. Only SATA II is on board; no SATA III3. Only USB 1.1 and 2.0; no USB 3.0 4. No Firewire 1394

So I'd have to add cards for SATA III, USB 3.0, and Firewire (for my audio interface). With all that, I'd be running out of slots, which is the problem I have today.

I do know the 3.1ghz 8 core 2011 server chip with HT/16 threads and i think 30mb cache, costs around 1600$ just for the 150watt tdp cpu

LOL, yeah with two of those maybe I could cook meat while heating my house!